Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Three Less

Wow...it has been over a week since I last blogged. Every once in awhile life gets busy, and I prefer to live it rather than write it :-)

We had guests for a week, and had a lot of fun traveling around the area, visiting the beautiful sights, staying up late and chatting. We don't often get overnight visitors, so when we do it is a special treat. With five kids and a dog, and being quite far off the beaten path, I don't know WHY on earth anyone wouldn't want to come stay at Casa LaJoy...hahaha!

The house is extremely quiet this week, as Olesya, Kenny and Joshua are off at church camp...their beloved LaForet in Colorado Springs. We are three less around here, and it feels weird! Thankfully, not a single forest fire has been reported yet, which sadly has almost become a tradition for camp months. Angie and Matt are home, and we are realizing we really live with several adults these days, not a houseful of kids. Dominick and I ran into town yesterday to take Sunny to the groomer for her annual shave down (I hate the way she looks like this...sort of a combo of a lamb and a greyhound dog!! Ugh!), and came home to a mowed yard and the trash cans hauled to the curb without us saying a word about it. When we went in the house, we thanked the kids for being so responsible with being reminded, and they both acted as if it was no big deal at all.

It is nice to get the kids in different groupings, as the dynamics are very different and it often reveals nuances that are missed in the larger group setting. Angela and I have been watching inspirational mini-films that she has found and shown me, and we both really love the same sorts of things in that regard. Tonight, though I am getting a night out with friends at the movies, Angie and I plan to stay up really late and watch TV together...chick flicks or shows that we usually put aside for everyone else. She is looking for a Bollywood film to share with me, her total passion...and we have spent time looking at all the handsome Bollywood actors on Google. So cute, so sweet...so Angie. She says she would like to marry a man from India or an African American man, because she finds them to be quite handsome. I have to admit, she has very, very good taste :-) We often tease one another because our taste in other things runs quite counter to one another. She is a big sunglasses, leopard print, large dangly earring kind of gal...and I am more along the lines of small stud earrings, animal print hating, practical glasses kind of mom. Somehow though, it works, and we do have a crossover of "likes" that appears fairly often. We joke that all we have to do to select a gift for one another is pick out what we hate, and we know the other will adore it! Hahaha!

And that is sort of how our family rolls, we don't have any expectations that anyone has to like the same things, believe the same things, etc. to be "right"...unless it is core morals or values. Other than that, everyone is quite free to be exactly how they want to be, though Angela's more Russian style and taste has had to be tamed a bit as she recognized early on that in American, some of what is an acceptable "look" in Kazakhstan is viewed here as leaning more toward a "hooker look", so she recognizes the need to drop it down a notch! We just laugh over the differences, finding them amusing without judgment.

Matt is working on an enormous project for me, and has spent at least 15 hours on it already with probably 100 more to go. I am so grateful for his help, it is tedious and time consuming, and I really couldn't do this project without help from he and others. I will soon be talking more about it here, but it is also what has kept me from blogging as much as I have been very busy with research and working on it, which has required a lot of computer time. I am gradually growing excited about it, as is the whole family as everyone will be involved at some level. I have no idea if we will be successful or not, but we're going to give something a try.

Dominick and I looked at one another yesterday and said, "So this is what it would have felt like if we had stayed with two kids."

The pros:

1) Far fewer dishes. I had NO idea really, just how often we ran the darned dishwasher around here!
2) Quieter
3) Less "stuff" laying around that has to be picked up
4) Leaving the house is far easier with two than five...you just get ready and go, and we aren't really waiting for anyone
5) Food...we have it...I have not yet hit Walmart and don't need to. I live in a perpetual state of dreading the Walmart run, or being on a Walmart run.
6) The dog spends time with me, normally she hovers around the kids all the time, and most often Olesya. Suddenly, I am an attractive companion.

The cons:

1) Quiet is definitely over-rated.
2) Less laughter. More people = more silly things happening to laugh about
3) No Kenny
4) No Olesya
5) No Joshua

#'s 3, 4, and 5 are enough alone to negate the Pros of #'s 1-6.

As for Dominick and I, he is just staying quite busy working in this awful heat, getting up very, very early almost every morning and coming home quite tuckered out. I am trying to adjust to my new bifocals. It is not going well and to say I hate them is an understatement. However, in order to move my attitude to gratitude this afternoon, I took my glasses off and looked around, trying to do ANYTHING for 10 minutes without seeing.

It worked.

Popped those bifocals on and was immediately so grateful that I can see with some semblance of normalcy versus what my naked eyes see like. Funny how we really can do little things to change our outlook tremendously. Don't get me wrong, I'll still complain about them now and then, I am sure, but at least I will come back to center quickly with that simple reminder of naked eyes that literally can not function at all and would mean the very end of life as I know it if it weren't for me half inch thick coke bottle bifocal lenses.

Another week of camp next week after a trip to Colorado Springs to drop off and pick up, and we will get life back to normal, whatever that is around here :-)